One entire wall of the North Gallery of the Mystic Seaport Museum displays a whale scratchboard illustration of a Whale by Jos Sances, a California-based artist. Sances was influenced by black-and-white illustrations for Moby-Dick, which inspired his use of scratchboard as a bold, hands-on medium.
A type of reverse drawing, the black ink coating is scratched off with a knife, revealing white clay below. Sances' work includes many illustrations with a social justice theme. He feels his work reminds viewers of scrimshaw, which sailors etched on whale teeth and bones.
From Sances: "The eye of . . . Whale confronts us with images of Black enslavement, brutalization, and cultural distortion. A host of images encircle it, including an Abolitionist figure who asks, "AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?" while proffering a racist cartoon caricature and a beautiful sleeping infant, a self-contradictory pair of images."
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